Category: most popular articles 2018

Sometimes, the past is best left revisited, again, and again, and again…

Welcome to 2019, folks; it used to be that I would insert a joke at this point about the dates on all of your checks being incorrect for the next week or so, but if you are still handwriting checks in 2019, then I have a cordless phone set to sell to you.

To help me recover from the festivities of the end-of-year holiday season (read: sober up), I decided to take a look back at the analytics for this humble piece of Global Interweb land and revisit the past year, in terms of what 1WD articles were deemed most popular. Popularity, in this context, is measured in sheer volume of visits (and listed in descending order, from the 10th most popular post to the first).

As many of you have noted to me both publicly and in private, 2018 was an excellent twelve months for me personally (politically, though, not so much). The important factors: my family is strong, my kiddo is doing very well, and my love life hit a high note that I only thought possible within the confines of really corny romance fiction. If you decide to waste any precious moments of your life (again) reading any of the articles linked below, please raise a glass with me while doing so, and we can toast to the genuine (on my part, anyway) wish that 2019 delivers more of the same good fortune to us all.

6. You Will *Learn* Patience (Tasting The 2016 Port Vintage) I’m stoked that this ended up being one of the most popular articles on 1WD last year, because it was one of the most memorable wine experiences for me in all of 2018. That an online guy got to be one of the first to give you all a critical run-down on a declared Port vintage is pretty clear sign that the wine publication times have irrevocably changed. Also, Obi-wan FTW!

1. Naked Wines And The Cult Of “Fake News” That this was the single most visited post on 1WD in all of 2018 is, I think, a minor disaster for Naked Wines’ brand image, and a bit of a sad treatise on where we are in our discourse politically, particularly in the trend of ignoring facts and shaming knowledgeable authorities to suit personal/political/monetary gain. I suppose it’s a further underscoring of how important it is to control your brand message, do the right thing, and successfully manage damage control in today’s online-focused world (and Naked managed to f*ck up almost all of those in that example).